Charles Sekano

Charles Sekano, the South African artist and musician, lived in Kenya from 1967 to 1997 and now lives in Pretoria, South Africa.
It was in Nairobi in the 1960s, amid the very real isolation of exile that Sekano forged himself into both self taught artist and musician and where he worked as a Jazz pianist in the multiracial bars and nightclubs of this rough edged African metropolis. Here he lived life in the tradition of a romantic bohemian artist and musician, developing his own version of the three Rs - 'the three Ps' - Painting, Poetry and Piano. Like Degas and Toulouse Lautrec before him, living amongst his, mostly female, subjects.

His artistic expression was and is informed by the sense of loss experienced after his family were uprooted and by the resultant severing of family bonds. Women, for Sekano, - those that he immortalises in his works - became his world and his artistic language.

Sekano explains, 'The whole idea is a symbolic relationship. Even the theme "Woman" seems to be remembering my mother, my sisters. I'm trying to live on a higher level with them because I have no communication to show that I am attached to them. They are inseparable from me. There is no border. This Woman theme is my landscape. The only piece of property I own. Woman is the only country I have.'

Apart from two fine works from the late 1980s the paintings in this exhibition has been produced in the last two years

Ed Cross Fine Art thanks Simon Russell for his generous support for this exhibition.